Subtitles section Play video
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Hello and welcome back to Easy English with James! Today we're going to have a
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look at the letter 'e'. This is a special letter because it's the most common
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letter in all of English and there are more ways to pronounce the letter e than
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there are ways to pronounce any other letter in English, so if you want to know
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exactly how to pronounce this letter and you want to master your pronunciation
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stick with me as we learn all about the letter E!
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[Music]
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okay so the letter e it's a vowel letter the vowels in english are a e i o and u
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the letter e is the second vowel letter in english after the letter a if you
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want to learn more about the letter a check out my video up here okay the
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letter e is a vowel letter that is actually the most common letter in all
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of english so it's super important maybe the most important letter for you to
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learn actually in english 13 or 14 percent
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between 13 and 14 of all english writing
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is just the letter e that means if you read a book or a newspaper
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13 of the letters is just the letter e okay it's the
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letter e is everywhere nearly every word in english contains a letter e okay it's
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really really important so how many ways do you think there are to
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pronounce this letter have a think and today we're going to go
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through all of those different ways and i'll give you advice on your
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pronunciation we'll talk about some vocabulary that you can use some really
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long words some crazy words and hopefully by the end of this lesson
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you'll know all of the different ways to pronounce this and we'll have a little
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test at the end okay so let's start with number one
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okay so number one nice and easy to start with
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the letter e obviously can be pronounced
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e this is how it is pronounced in the
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alphabet a b c d e e
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we make this sound watch closely e
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e your lips widen a little bit and your tongue sort of hovers
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e e
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e sometimes people call this the long e but don't always use that because it
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doesn't have to be very very long it can be e e e okay but the important thing is
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that your mouth gets wide e e
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e we find this in really common words it's
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very important because it's found in super common words like he
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or she or we
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or me
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and also the verb to be
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okay practice with me he she
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we me
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and to be
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to be okay if you want to practice that better
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or faster try going through all of them he she we me
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he she we me he she we me okay and you'll get that
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sound really really natural really really natural okay we can also
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pronounce the letter e as e in words where it is a stressed syllable
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so take a look at the word female
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female okay female the stressed syllable is the first part
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of that word fee and you can see the letter e there
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that's the stressed part e so often in many words in english when
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the e is the stressed part we pronounce it e
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take a look at evening
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evening evening
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okay and female and even secret
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secret okay female
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secret evening
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in those words one syllable is stressed the syllable with the letter e at the
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beginning is stressed so we pronounce it e be careful because there are many
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exceptions to this rule but in many words when the e is stressed we
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pronounce it e okay you'll also find this
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pronunciation of the letter e in words like chinese or vietnamese or japanese
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okay e-s-e any word with e-s-e that e-s-e is
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pronounced ease ease okay this is because of something
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called magic e
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don't worry magic e we're going to look at at the end of today's lesson but for
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now look at words like theme and you can also see they have e then a
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consonant and then another e that final e is called magic e okay and that's one
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of the reasons why we pronounce these e japanese
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chinese okay vietnamese
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and theme and scene
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okay practice those words we also pronounce the letter e as e in
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greek words that means words in english that come from the ancient greek
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language okay words like hercules you know the really famous
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strong man hercules hercules okay but also plurals of greek words so the
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single word oasis if you change that to the plural which
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means many of you just add es oases same with crisis becomes crises and
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thesis becomes theses okay that es on the end of words here is always
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pronounced ease ease because they're taken from greek
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okay so practice hercules
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hercules and
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feces and
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crises and oases also we often pronounce the letter e as
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e in words where it appears next to an a so the letters e a together if you look
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at words like jeans
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genes or meat meet
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meet or even teacher
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teacher teacher teach okay and
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reach that ea here together is pronounced as
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the e e okay so practice with me
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teacher teach
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jeans a nice pair of jeans and
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meat meat
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okay this is the same when we have two letter
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e's together e e in words like free everybody loves free stuff right free
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and agree agree
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and the animal b okay the buzzing b
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b agree and
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free so when you see words with two e's together it's normally pronounced long e
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sound e agree
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be and free sometimes when you see the letters e and
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i together e and then i in words like protein protein
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sealing sealing and
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receipt receipt okay when you go to buy
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something you will get a receipt the e before the i is sometimes not always be
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careful because there are many exceptions sometimes e before i is also
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pronounced e in english e the best way to learn this is to listen to each new
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word okay ask a native speaker or look up on an online dictionary for the sound
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of each word when you learn it so you know is this e i pronounced e or not
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okay so protein ceiling
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and receipt
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receipt okay also we can turn it around instead
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of the e before the i we can put the i before the e
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and that combination of letters is also pronounced
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e in words like peace
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peace and
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briefcase briefcase when you go to work you carry
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a briefcase also in the word believe believe you'll see the final syllable
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there leave is iev so ieve believe believe okay so
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e before i can be pronounced sometimes e and also i before e can sometimes be
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pronounced e2 okay believe peace and briefcase
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finally there are some special words in english where e is at the end of the
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word and it's pronounced e usually they're words that are borrowed from
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other languages especially japanese so words like karate
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karate or karaoke karaoke both of those end in e
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but they're borrowed from another language so we put the e at the end as a
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e e sound okay practice again karaoke
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karaoke and karate karate
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okay so let's try some practice sentences with this
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pronunciation of the letter e she is free to believe there is a bee
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on the ceiling she is free to believe there is a bee on
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the ceiling practice with me she is free to believe there is a bee on
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the ceiling your turn
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okay she is free to believe there is a bee on the ceiling you'll see all of the
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different spellings in that sentence and hopefully the more you practice that
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sentence you'll be able to get a good feel for when we pronounce the letter e
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as e okay you can also try this sentence we see chinese genes on the beach
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we see chinese jeans on the beach okay practice with me we see chinese jeans on
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the beach your turn
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okay well done let's have a look at the next way that we can pronounce this
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letter okay the next way that we can pronounce
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the letter e in english is as an e e
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watch closely my jaw goes down e e
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you'll know this from words like egg okay
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this one is really simple to remember the letter e is pronounced er very often
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in words that end in the letter e and then a consonant so look at the word get
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you've got the letter e and then a consonant
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the word met or bet or set or even longer words like hotel
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hotel they all have the letter e followed by a consonant at the end of a
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word okay there are exceptions to this rule too of course in english but
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a good rule to remember is that if you see the letter e followed by a consonant
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and it's at the end of a word especially short words like bet met set and let
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it's usually pronounced
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practice with me hotel hotel
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get get
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set set
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and met
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met okay well done
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you'll also see the letter e pronounced air in words where you see the letter e
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followed by a consonant and then another vowel so look at the word exit
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exit you've got the letter e then you've got a consonant x and then you've got
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another vowel i okay exit look at the word never
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or ever
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or level okay all of these words have the
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letter e followed by a consonant followed by another vowel sometimes it's
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another e like in never or ever or level okay
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when you see that often in english it's pronounced e e
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never level okay ever well done
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also you'll find this in words where the letter e is followed by th okay things
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like weather as in whether it rains or not
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okay and together together they both have the letter e
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followed by t h together whether okay often in words
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like that the letter e is pronounced e other exceptions where we also pronounce
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the letter e as a are words like else else and
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center okay both of these have that e pronunciation
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also the letter e can be pronounced e in words with e a again remember before e a
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was pronounced e well in english ea can also be pronounced e okay so e a
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in words like dead
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dead or bread
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or breakfast okay in dead you can see the letter e
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followed by the letter a again e a but this time it's not pronounced e this
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time it's pronounced er there's a really good example of this with the word read
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read in the present tense is i read a book but in the past it's
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i read a book but the spelling is exactly the same i know english can be a
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little bit crazy sometimes but i read in the present and i read in the past so ea
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can be pronounced e or air
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and in many many cases ea is pronounced e
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try these words weather
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weather head
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head dead
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and breakfast
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breakfast practice with me weather weather
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head head
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dead dead
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and breakfast
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breakfast all have that e pronunciation try these practice sentences with the
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letter e as a every hotel breakfast i have in bed
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every hotel breakfast i have in bed okay lots of words with air with the letter e
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pronounced air one more time every hotel breakfast i have in bed
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okay let's look at the next one number two is get to the exit or else you'll be
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dead get to the exit or else you'll be dead
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okay get to the exit or else you'll be dead
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number three is the bread gets wet in bad weather
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the bread gets wet in bad weather try and say this one as fast as you can the
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bread gets wet in bad weather the bread gets wet in bad weather and you'll get a
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really good feel for that e e sound okay practice with me the
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bread gets wet in bad weather okay the next way number three the third way that
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we can pronounce the letter e in english is
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uh
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er okay it's a really relaxed sound we start with our mouth in the same
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position that you make the schwa sound in english
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but this time we make it a little bit longer make sure you're vibrating your
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vocal chords uh uh imagine it's trying to continually push
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that sound out of your mouth not uh but uh
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okay
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uh okay we pronounce the letter e as uh in
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really common words like her
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and were
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and person okay you'll notice that e and r
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together e and are in her or were or person or even
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verb the e and the r together usually means that that is pronounced
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so if you see a word with e-r like refer refer you see the e-r and you know it's
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pronounced uh practice with me person
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person verb
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her and
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were well done also in words where you see
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the letters e a and r together you'll love this e a can be pronounced in so
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many ways in english this time e a and r together is pronounced
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uh so in words like
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earth we all live on planet earth earth e-a-r here is pronounced
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er er
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so if e-a-r is pronounced uh then words like
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learn learn
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and early
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early okay uh lee early also words like search
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search okay e-a-r is often pronounced uh
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practice with me earth
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earth make sure you get that th sound at the end of the word earth
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earth then search
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search search
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and then learn
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learn and
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early early
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there are also some loan words from french that have really weird spellings
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in english so words that are a little bit longer that you see ending in e
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u r they're not common words in english
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they're very rare but these are words that english has borrowed from french
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words like saboteur